Customer Reviews

Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (Dungeons & Drangons: Living Greyhawk Campaign)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Overall, I think this is an excellent sourcebook. I can't compare this to previous boxed sets, for two reasons: 1) I'm relatively new to Greyhawk; and 2) just about every campaign product more than 2 years old is now out of print. But here's my quick rundown.

The Good -- At 192 pages, this is a very comprehensive guide. It's organized in much the same way as the D&D Gazetteer, only in much greater detail. While a lot of this material (especially the history of the Flanaess) has been covered previously, the country descriptions make up the heart of the book. You get at least a full page for each country, breaking down the cities, religions, politics, economy and more. Want the stats for the head of one of the noble houses of Ahlissa? It's here. Wondering how many orcs live in the Pomarj? No problem. The section on Greyhawk's pantheon of gods is equally in-depth, expanding on the information in the Player's Handbook. I also thought including the color heraldry for each country was a nice touch. The world map is essentially a larger version of the D&D Gazetteer map, only with hexes and more cities indicated. Good, but not great.

The Bad -- There's more here on the organizations of the Flanaess than in the D&D Gazetteer, but nowhere near enough as far as I'm concerned. For example, I figured the Knights of the Hart would be treated like a prestige class. However, there are no guidelines or prerequisites for characters to join such groups. It simply says they're actively searching for new members. While this may be covered in an upcoming product, it should be here.

The Ugly -- I have mixed feelings about Wizards of the Coast turning over Greyhawk to the RPGA. Putting the campaign world in the hands of players is a good thing. (After all, players sustained Greyhawk while TSR was neglecting it.) At the same time, it seems like some details are being reserved for the Living Greyhawk campaign. And that's not for everyone. Greyhawk adventures once made up the heart of D&D. I'd hate to see such a rich product line dry up completely.

If you like campaigning in the world of Greyhawk, this is probably an essential buy. Taken as a whole, it's extremely well-done and deserves a strong recommendation. We'll just have to see if there's more to come.

An excellent resource book on the World of Greyhawk setting -- A 'must have' for any serious Greyhawk DM!

If you want to DM a Greyhawk campaign, don't waste your time with the smaller D&D Gazetteer -- it has many grossly misleading errors in it and is merely a botched abridgment of this book -- get this one. And don't let the RPGA logo turn you off, this is quality material.

We are most fortunate that some of the most knowledgeable Greyhawk scholars put this thing together for us, people that really care about the Greyhawk setting; and their love of the world shows in the craftsmanship of this book. Erik, Gary, Fred, and Sean did a magnificent job given the time constraints and other challenges that they worked under! Pity they weren't given a greater word count allowance to pack even more in.

This is a world book detailing the setting -- that's why it's called a Gazetteer! It is not a book filled with monsters, magic items, and spells. Nor is it a book for power mongering players looking for new ways to munchkin-max their PCs. It doesn't really deal with D&D game mechanics, instead it largely focuses on detailing the world itself so that it can be used with any roleplaying system (e.g., I myself prefer the HERO SYSTEM over D&D now, but this book's value is not diminished for me because of this).

While it doesn't replace an entire library of old out-of-print Greyhawk books it does offer some new information and no other book gives so much information on the World of Greyhawk setting -- if that is what you're looking for, then this is definately the book for you!

That said, I don't think that the book is perfect. I only give it 4.5 stars instead of 5 because I have some minor quibbles with the interpretations and extrapolations made by the authors in a few places (but these are only minor complaints between fellow scholars). And I further reduce that to 4 stars because it wasn't what it could have, and should have, been -- 256 page hardcover with a map equal to the old Darlene map from the Folio/Boxed Set in terms of size and paper quality.

Still, I'm amazed that WotC let something this good get published without butchering it. I can only hope that a deluxe hardcover version with a greater page count, and text density will be published sometime in the future.

If you also like what you see in this book, I'd strongly recommend joining the RPGA just so that you can get the bi-monthly LIVING GREYHAWK JOURNAL which continues to provide quality material. These and the LIVING GREYHAWK GAZETTEER are the only sources of information that you'll see published on Greyhawk for some time.

In short, if you want to DM in Greyhawk, then do yourself, and your players, a favour: get this book and join the legions of Greyhawk fans..

Ive been playing in Greyhawk for over 13 years now. I remember buying the old boxed set many years ago with birthday money. Cracking that pristine box open and looking upon the works of Pluffet Smedger (the Eldar, of course), unfolding the beautiful maps..... Greyhawk has persisted as my favorite fantasy rpg setting since that day; outlasting childhood, adolescence, girlfriends, 5 years in the USMC, 6 years of marriage, several jobs, dozens of friends and acquaintences, more gaming groups than I can count on two hands, and relocations around the US and jaunts overseas. Even when the setting was kicked to the curb by T$R and went 'underground' for too long a time; even when met with the uncomprehending stares of Forgotten Realms players when trying to get a game going, I stuck with my old favorite setting to the bitter end if need be.

Greyhawk is synonymus with FRPG in my mind. Thru major campaigns and story arcs, even conversion to another game system my love of the setting has continued to the present day.

So, suffice it to say Ive got an investment in the setting of both time and emotion, and thus am not exactly an unbiased reviewer.

With all of that said, as empirically and objectively as I can manage, I must give the LGG a full 5 stars. On a 1 to 10 scale it might be a 9, due primarily to overall lower quality intererior art, but such a nick isnt worth 20% on a 1 to 5 scale; thus on a scale of 1 to 5, the LGG goes the distance.

Why such a high rating? Because this is the book that Ive wanted so many times over the years, feverishly detailing campaigns and sessions with too little time and too many widely scattered sources of material, or worse a total lack of material period. This book manages to coalesce many of the crucial Greyhawk canonical works into one quality product while expanding material in many places, fabricating new material in others, and somehow managing to bridge the gap between the oftentimes widely different 'eras' of pre-Carl Sargent and post-Carl Sargent work (for the record, Im mostly pro-Carl Sargent).

While I have run & played in many Greyhawk campaigns, I persist the events of past campaigns in my version of Greyhawk; including material that I have had to make up over the years to fill gaps in the printed canon or altered canon to fit my purposes, and the actions of PCs from various groups. Therefore there are discrepencies between 'my version' and the official canon as Im sure is true of many other DMs Greyhawk campaigns, but that is hardly a fault on the part of the writers and thanx to the largely modular approach taken by the design team I can easily snap in replacement sections where needed without unduly skewing all other relevant material.

I remember Erik Mona and Gary Holian from the days of GreyTalk; in fact, I played in a play-by-email rendition of the classic Slavers module run by Gary Holian briefly many years ago. They both have grass roots-level history with Greyhawk, and it shows. Though I will likely never meet either, I feel indebted to them both for providing this book, which is obviously a labor of love, to the community in general and me specifically.

To sum up, all players and DMs who have an interest in Greyhawk should check this book out, and all Greyhawkers both old-school and those who prefer From the Ashes on owe it to themselves to buy this book. Let me say it again. ALL GREYHAWKERS SHOULD BUY THIS BOOK.

Now that's about as gushy of a review as Ive ever given, but I cant stress my appreciation of this product enough. Oerth lives in the shadow of its over-commercialized successor Faerun and there is likely little we can ever do about that. Nevertheless the setting has survived in the hearts and homes of its fans for a very long time even when excommunicated by its original publisher, and with a quality product like this new players and old alike can reap the benefit of what has come before while pressing on to forge new adventures in the FRPG world which started it all.

The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (LGG hereafter) is the latest incarnation of one of the very first published roleplaying campaign settings. Initially released in the early 1980s, Greyhawk had its start as the homebrew setting of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator E. Gary Gygax and was the primal stomping ground from which many of the game's most distinctive offbeat tropes emerged.

How does this venerable setting hold up after more than twenty-five years? Remarkably well, all things considered.

Before we proceed any further, however, into what the LGG is, I want to make it very clear what it is not:

1. The LGG is not a "crunchy" book. This alone sets it apart from not only most other D&D products, but most other roleplaying books period. The LGG contains not one single new prestige class, spell, feat, magic item, or monster. In fact, it also doesn't include statistics for any of the various NPCs mentioned throughout the text. Not a one. The writers had only 192 pages to work with and apparently chose to forsake such things entirely in favor of packing the LGG to the gills with details on history, cultures, politics, theology, and geography. Whether this is a strength or a weakness is up to you. Personally, as someone who enjoys D&D-style games without D&D-style rules, I found this virtually systemless format to be ideal for use with other rulesets.

2. The LGG is not a pretty book. Despite beautiful cover art, the LGG is far from pleasing to the eye overall. Moreover, it's softcover, a turn-off for some.

3. While the LGG does present the framework of a great campaign, there is no attempt made to match the sheer level of minute detail present in settings like Forgotten Realms and Kingdoms of Kalamar. Rather, the LGG's focus is on the big picture: Gods, geography and broad national and ethnic divisions. If you want a setting that details every little rut in the backroads, Greyhawk is simply not it. As someone who specifically doesn't want a world with a "canon" answer to everthing and few real mysteries and spaces left to fill-in myself, this aspect appeals to me. In the end, there's no right answer. It all comes down to how much setting detail is not enough for you, how much is too much, and how much is just right.

4. Greyhawk is not "fresh", "new", or "out there." As the original home of most of the classic Gygaxian D&D tropes, Greyhawk doesn't feature the clever (and often more than a little subversive) takes on them that defined such settings as Spelljammer and Planescape. If you still enjoy thoroughly "vanilla" D&D-style gaming, Greyhawk may be the world for you. If you don't, keep looking.

Now that the disclaimers are out of the wat, there's a lot I like about the World of Greyhawk.

Firstly, it has a nice feel to it. While not truly "dark fantasy" like, say, Ravenloft or Midnight, Greyhawk has a very gritty, dangerous tone about it. True strongholds of good are few and far between and there's a real sense that the only reason evil hasn't overwhelmed the entire continent yet is because its various factions don't work together too well.

To borrow an old cliche, there's a lot of "gray" in Greyhawk. The city of Rel Astra is ruled by a reanimated corpse and his advisor, a two-headed demon. The people don't seem to mind, though, because while technically "evil", he's also a damn fine mayor. Greyhawk is just the kind of world where evil guys sometimes make better landlords.

Another good example is the Theocracy of the Pale, a nation run by clerics of the Lawful Good god Pholtus. Sounds like a nice place, right? Wrong. Turns out that Pholtus is a great guy...as long as you happen to believe that his way is the One True Way. Disagree and you'll be handed over to the Inquisition before you know it. Bad times. In fact, the Pale would be much more likely to unite with a band of Lawful Evil Hextorians to wipe out some Chaotic Good elves than vice-versa, as disorder and lack of respect for Law are much more offensive to their stern god than Evil. Overall, only the Planescape setting does a better job supporting the oft-neglected Law-Neutrality-Chaos axis of the D&D alignment system.

All this adds up to a lot of potenial angles a good GM can work. A group with a hankering for a straightforward Tolkien-style "stop the Big Bad Evil Guy" campaign can be pitted against Iuz. One that wants more politics and less "Good versus Evil" can choose beween a number of good or neutral nations that go to war all the time over the very same religious, ethnic, nationalistic, or economic pretenses that abound in our own history. One that just wants to ignore the big picture altogether in favor of rooting around in dungeons is well-provided for, as well.

Furthermore, Greyhawk has virtually no major NPC heroes in its canon. Most of the good NPCs described in the book are rulers. As politicians, they can't just grab a sword and march off to slay orcs. The closest thing the setting has to "iconic NPCs" are the various mages of the Circle of Eight, but they're far from do-gooders. In fact, thier philosophy of militant neutrality makes them just as likely to oppose a PC group as help one on its way. This is bound to appeal to gamers disillusioned with settings like Forgotten Realms where dozens of esablished crusading superhero NPCs can sometimes make PC heroes feel unneeded. Overall, the abundance of evil and lack of super-competent NPC adventurers combines to paint Greyhawk as a world badly in need of heroes, and not just any heroes, but your PCs. I dig that.

Finally, Greyhawk has a comfy "lived-in" feel that any old D&D veteran can appreciate. Vecna hails from here, as do Mordenkainen, Tenser, and a host of other famous names from the dawn of fantasy roleplaying. Not to mention places like the Temple of Elemental Evil, the Tomb of Horrors, and the Barrier Peaks and legendry artifacts like the Rod of Seven Parts and the Orbs of Dragonkind. More than any other setting I can think of, Greyhawk has a profound sense of glorious history.

Overall, I heartily recommend the LGG. Despite a few nagging problems like poor interior art, the lack of an index, and little attention paid to nonhuman gods, the world itself is a compelling and believable one with a great deal of flexability and character. If "vanilla" D&D is your idea of a good time, this oldie is still a goodie.

Despite some of the lukewarm receptions that some of the other reviewers give this product, I found the LGG fantastic!

The world of Greyhawk is presented in all of its varying shades of "grey" glory. From Ahlissa to Zief; all of the political factions, organized lands, forests, rivers, lakes, mountains, and islands are incredibly detailed--while still allowing the DM ample room to manipulate/develop the game world to his/her hearts content. (Admittedly a difficult thing to balance, but the authors pull it off!) There are also mysteries and adventure ideas mentioned within each entry to help the game master generate ideas for their own campaigns.

It is true that some of the information in the book may be repeated from older sources. However, it is also true that unless you care to spend tons of money on ebay buying up out-of-print titles, you'll never get this much solid Greyhawk information complied into such a well presented and organized package.

Lastly, many of the authors of the book have been THE backbone to the Greyhawk community on the 'net over the years. They are in no small way responsible for helping to keep Greyhawk alive during the difficult TSR years.

It's great to see their hard work and love for the Greyhawk setting (over the years) come to print media with such style and grace.

M. Schroeder

The first fantasy world I used for my adventures was Greyhawk. That was .. well, long ago. At the time, all a DM had to work with were the original Greyhawk boxed set, some articles in Dragon Magazine and what info he could milk out of the Gord the Rogue novel series (by G. Gygax himself). That was fine enough if all you wanted was some hack and slash campaign but not if you aimed at something a bit more ambitious. The real problem at the time was an almost total lack of info on the political/social web (especially for the western nations) and holes big enough for a dragon when it came down to local info on towns and places which were just weird names on a map.

Not anymore ! At long last this brilliant accessory give you all the insight you need on civilizations, gods and organizations (the Knights of the Great Kingdom in particular are a nice plus). The major problem awaiting any DM is that he'll have to sit for a few hours and read through all of it before he is able to see the large picture (and, believe me, you'll need to) if he isn't an old timer used to this world.

I can but regret that Carl Sargent hasn't been asked to continue his Greyhawk Gazetteer series (which ended with Ivid the Undying) to supply info on each nation in turn.

The one thing I find amusing is how fast they changed the world's outlook. At first (with the From the Ashes) box, you had a war-ravaged world on the brink of disaster with demons, devils and such in every corner of the map, just waiting for your characters to make one wrong move. Then, probably deciding it was too depressing for young players, they used a deus ex machina device (aka the Crook of Rao) and banished 95% of the big bad demons back to where they belong. Wew, the world is safer, now the villains are "only" mortals again. Last but not least, they don't seem to be able to make up their mind about some nations. Nyrond, for one, goes from 'war-torn' to 'start to recover' to 'still in shambles' 6 years after the wars ended. During all this time, the new king is described as trying to repair the roads and re-establish trade. I mean, the nation wasn't even invaded and two years of war left its road system virtually destroyed !?! Why ? How ? Did it rain like hell for two years in a row ? If leaving the roads untended for two years was enough to eradicate them, then I wouldn't have wanted to use them before !

If Greyhawk is old hat to you, then this won't be any thing new to you. But for those of us who are new to Greyhawk, this is better than the first 3rd ed. Gazeteer that WotC released. It is chock full of everything you need to play in greyhawk. Extensive writeups on countries, history, the gods and factions are jammed into this thick book! This is the info I was looking for in the other Gazeteer. If you need a gazeteer with info on everyhting in Greyhawk, then buy this one and skip the other.

The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer is a great sourcebook for any new D&D player. It goes into greater detail than the other Gazetter (which is much smaller and cheaper) and the details it has is a great help to building a character that is fully set for this campaign world. The book is not a absolute-must-rush-to-get, but due to the fact that the core rule books are set in the greyhawk setting, this helps with all the small things. Not to mention that you get a map of the Flanaess, and we all know that the reason we buy these things are for the maps.

No, it doesn't cost $40 and no it doesn't have little gremlins which pop up to turn the pages for you but the LGG is worth purchasing for all the reasons mentioned by other reviewers. Also, I'd like to mention that Sword & Fist includes details on the Knights of the Great Kingdom, Knights of the Watch, etc., likewise you'll find other Greyhawk-related details in other such guidebooks (e.g., Defenders of the Faith)with which you can further enrich your Greyhawk gaming experience. And let's not forget that more can be found by signing up with the RPGA in order to get the Living Greyhawk Journal. That, too, is worthwhile. But the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer is where it all starts so get your copy ASAP! Just thought you would like to know. :)

A gentleman writes about his concern over Wizards of the West Coast decision to turn over Greyhawk to the RPGA. The major focus of his review was for the most part positive. He cited the authors devotion to detail for each of the countries and expressed his admiration over such detail concerns as Orc populations in a particular region.
The Gazateer, to me, represents an ongoing creative impetus began by those wily Wizards of the West Coast, that has caught on so well that many, many, many volumes and texts now exist describing events in the Greyhawk setting. I like the adherance to what the game was all about, campaigning over vast expanses of territory and encountering diverse situations. I also like the idea that if this campaign setting were turned over to the RPGA, the possibilities and potential for growth and expansion in each of the character core classes would be limitless. Having a real world wide organization handle the duties of gathering information and bring in new and prospective players to the Greyhawk setting takes a great deal of the work out of the game for players and Dungeon Masters alike and puts the fun back into role playing.
I enjoy reading the Gazette from my own home town. It keeps me in touch with others in the community, as well as informed about events that occur around the world. What a great way to chronicle events in an imaginary world where real individuals and groups participate to play out fictional characters, storylines, and events.
Indeed it does happen to be refreshing that Greyhawk has remained true to its principles, even to the point of having minimal room for such classes as ninjas. Great work guys, keep it up! Patrick Driscoll, Admirer of the Greyhawk Lineage.